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Ordinarily, those words would send me into a frantic dash for the fire extinguisher nearest my TF cabinet. However, this time they only sent me home from work early. The electricity pole outside of our office blew up today and caught on fire. One of the transformers (not that kind of transformer) on it exploded and caused some serious power fluctuations in our building.

It was pretty exciting. There was a loud boom (like an M80 went off outside) and the lights started flickering. We shut down all the computers and turned out the lights, figuring that the power company would be out shortly to fix it (and turn off the power anyway). For the next half hour or so, everyone in the office was staring out the windows at the bright sparks from the fire on the pole.

The fire department showed up and tried to put out the fire with water from a firehose. The electricity was flaring white hot, and the flames were localized to the transformer, but very high. I didn’t think that water would work on an electrical fire, but it went out after three tries. Since there was nothing else interesting to see, we all went home early at around 2:30 PM.

I had to delete all of the comments in the blog database (except for Erica’s response, which was too nice to delete) because the comments were full of spam. I have no idea how spammers manage to post garbage into the blog comments, but my blog was full of it. So, I deleted them all and got rid of the ability to post comments.

Heavy handed? Maybe. But still better than seeing comment posts for antidepressants or online swingers. If you want to comment on one of my postings, feel free to drop me an email. I love attention, and I would love to hear what think about me. Oh, I walked right into that one…

It’s an annual tradition in our house to go out on Black Friday. Every year, on the day after Thanksgiving, Chrissy and I head to the local shopping malls early in the morning for the doorbuster deals. Chrissy and I are a great team, and she is an insane shopping maniac on prozac. She has our strategy planned out a week in advance. The bonus is that we usually get the majority of our holiday shopping done at a substantial savings. This year, we were in the car by 3:30 AM in order to be at Wal-Mart by 4:00 AM.

For a detailed account of our early-morning wanderings, click “Continue Reading”.

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Chrissy loves to dress Aiden up for photo shoots. This time, she’s got him in his Thanksgiving best with some fall-themed fabric as the backdrop. There’s a turkey in some of the photos, and that doesn’t include Te-Amo, who loves to have his picture taken also.

Chrissy and I packed Aiden into the car today for the long drive to Chip and Karen’s house. It was about time to introduce Aiden to the Seraphine twins. The drive wasn’t that bad, just over an hour, which is much better than the last time we went out there. At any rate, it was nice to get out of the house with the boy. Aiden slept the whole way there, and didn’t fuss too much while we were there either.

The promise of grilled meat was too much to turn down. Chip offered to make his world-famous (at least in his little world) “Ugly Pico de Gallo” and green chili burgers. It’s been too cold outside to grill for a while, but Chip just hooked a gas line up to his new deck and wasn’t about to take “cold” for an answer. Unfortunately, the burgers flopped — “crumbled” would be a better description. This is why I don’t grill burgers; I grill steaks. They don’t fall apart and tumble into the flames when you cook them outside. But the pico was awesome.

The twins are getting much bigger. Ryan is up to 17 pounds now. My new “daddy arms” aren’t quite up to the strain of holding a 17-pounder for long. I’m struggling to hold Aiden up for long at ten pounds. Elena Max smiles a lot, and it really brings out her big, blue eyes. She also has a mean scowl, which does nothing for her eyes, but luckily we didn’t see it very much. Once again, everybody loves Aiden, and he got to know everybody. He even slept all the way home.

Sony BMG released the new-and-improved version of “Transformers: The Movie” on November 7th. I pre-ordered my copy from FamilyVideo.com, which is ironic because I still owe the local Family Video about $20 in late fees. Chrissy and I caught this new version at a midnight showing at Botcon in Lexington, Kentucky. They did a really good job with the color remastering and the improved sound effects, and they did something that no one thought could ever be done: they produced a widescreen version.

The two-disc set has lots of extras, but I’ve been watching the movie itself over and over. Sony BMG packaged the widescreen version with two commentary tracks and a pop-up video overlay. So now while I’m feeding Aiden at night and there’s nothing else on TV, I watch the Transformers movie with a new commentary track. The pop-up video track, which Sony calls the “Matrix of Knowledge,” doesn’t really uncover any new information, but it’s cool to watch and adds some fun to a movie that I’ve already seen a dozen times.

The director’s commentary is interesting. Nelshin Shin, the Japanese director (I say this because he is Japanese, not because he directed the Japanese version of the movie), doesn’t speak English very well. He tries, with varied results, to describe how difficult it was for the animators to produce the quality seen. It hurts the ears to listen to. Summing up two hours of Nelson’s ramblings: there are a lot of lines to draw, flashing lights are difficult for animators, there are many hand-painted backgrounds and there are many layers on top of the original drawings.

Flint Dille, who was the final writer for the movie, doesn’t remember a whole lot about the making of the movie, but does offer a lot of insight into how animated movies were made back then. Sue Blu was also on hand to regale us with tales of Arcee’s inner feelings. She only talks when Arcee is onscreen, and only when Arcee is acting maternal with Daniel (which is every scene that Arcee is in). To be honest, I would have preferred an entire track with Flint Dille, but only if he had come prepared with notes and documentation to back up what he was saying.

The second commentary track is the fan commentary. This may seem stupid, but the fans are probably better able to comment on this particular movie than any other person alive today. There’s a British guy, Paul Hitchens, who came armed with a copy of the original script and several pages of notes. He pointed out every discrepancy in exacting detail and pointed out tiny details that I had never seen before. It was like sitting down with a master and being shown an entirely new movie. A few more feedings and I’ll have watched the movie four times since it came in the mail.

The Catholic Church has managed to aggravate me again. Chrissy would like to have Aiden baptised in the church that her family has gone to for years. I don’t mind this at all. Chrissy’s family is Catholic, and they are very active in the local Catholic church. Chrissy would like to raise Aiden with structure and a healthy conscience, and it wouldn’t hurt to have him participate with his extended family. I’m fine with this as well. I encourage it, in fact.

Chrissy and I went to St. James in Highland for the baptism class, where a deacon explained to us what would happen during the ceremony. The godfather and godmother are expected to participate in the ceremony also. Well, great, since we know exactly who we want to help guide our child to be a good person with strong morals and values. But wait, those people aren’t allowed to be your child’s godparents. Why not? We trust these people implicitly, and we know that their presence in Aiden’s life will contribute to his well being.

The reason is that they are not Catholic. You have to be a card-carrying, dues-paying, actively-practicing Catholic in order to be a godparent in a Catholic baptism. Aside from Chrissy’s immediate family, we don’t know any practicing Catholics. This limits our valid choices of godparents to Chrissy’s two younger sisters, Katie and Julie (Cassie isn’t old enough to be a valid godparent yet). So we can’t go with our first choices for godparents? No, not if you want your son to be baptised Catholic. And don’t forget, if he’s not baptised Catholic, then he can’t participate in any other Catholic sacraments, essentially being religiously alienated from his mother’s family.

I see the need here; the Church expects the godparents to help in raising the boy to be a good Catholic, which would require the godparents to be Catholic themselves. I’m just aggravated by the fact that I don’t get a choice in the matter (or at least, not my first choice). I think that Katie and Julie will make fine godparents, even if slightly redundant. I consider the act of asking someone to be a godparent to be something like asking them to join your immediate family. I wasn’t expecting to make family members into godparents, since they’re already family (a relationship that Chrissy and I hold very dear to us), hence the redundancy.

But them’s the rules. So, Aiden will be baptised at St. James church on 45th and Kennedy in Highland on January 7th. I hope that my family can come, even though they’re not Catholic.

I saw the new trailer for the Simpsons Movie during tonight’s episode of the Simpsons. I was very disappointed that its going to be a regular 2-D cartoon. You would think that their first movie, which some fans have waited 16 years to see, would have more effort put into it. If the movie is only going to amount to a two-hour cartoon, then they could have been making them once every other year or so.

I can tell you that heads would roll if they tried to pull that crap with the Transformers Movie. “Here’s Optimus Prime! He’s a cardboard cutout! And his face is a sticker!” Although there are some who would find this acceptable if they kept Peter Cullen as the voice actor, I would have to pass on this. I got standards, y’know.

At least Michael Bay is making a movie worth waiting two years to complete. If it takes an average of one week to produce a half-hour Simpsons episode, then why does it take two years to produce a two-hour (hour and a half?) episode of the Simpsons? The Simpsons Movie could have been a 3-D extravaganza, like a feature film with moving, talking versions of the Simpsons toys.

David gave knives as wedding presents to the groomsmen. I got one too, even though I was just an usher. It’s a very nice knife, a Spyder Endura DF, and it has my name engraved on the handle. I can’t stop playing with it while waiting for video games to load on my PC. Lock, unlock, lock, unlock. I can do it with one hand now, just opening it with my thumb. It’s one of those things that I enjoy having, but would never buy for myself.

My wife’s entire family has gone to the same dentist for ever, so I inherited the family dentist from them when I married into the family. The dental office is a family-run business, and they’re good people, so it all worked out. Today was my bi-annual checkup. It went surprisingly well — there was very little scraping involved, mostly just polishing.

I highly recommend the Braun Oral-B Professional toothbrush. Chrissy and I both got one last year, and it has dramatically decreased the suck factor in our cleanings. I still have my old Crest Spinbrush Pro toothbrush, and I use it occasionally for travel, but it just doesn’t even compare. I actually missed my Oral-B when I was in the UK.